This invention relates to animal bedding material and to the production of such bedding material.
Shredded paper, particularly shredded newsprint, has been used successfully as a bedding material for ruminant farm animals such as cattle. Such material has proved to be an extremely effective and non-toxic substitute for straw, shavings and other bedding materials.
The use of shredded newspapers as bedding for small intensively reared animals such as poultry being reared for the broiler market has, however, been less satisfactory. The shreds of paper will have a length approximating to the width of a folded newspaper page (approximately 300-400 mm). Because of their length, the shreds tend to become entangled and matted with excrement, so that after a period of intensive use the bedding becomes caked. When caked, the bedding is virtually a continuous mass which does not bio-degrade effectively, and which can give rise to poultry rash. Furthermore, the cleaning of the area of use, for example a broiler-house, becomes very laborious because the caked paper shreds are very slippery.
An object of the present invention is to solve this problem very simply be providing a bedding material suitable for both large and small animals, which is less prone to matting and entanglement during prolonged use, particularly with intensively reared animals, than conventional shredded paper bedding.